Aerial Attacks

[tsweezy]

Been meaning to get to these before the season started, oops. Anyways!

 

Let's prognosticate this season's best passing attacks! To try and figure out what makes a good passing attack, we're going to combine the pass blocking grades from the OL, the QB skill, the WR1, WR2, and best of either the TE or WR, with weights so that QB = 2, WR = 1.5, WR2 = 1, OL = 1, WR3/TE = .75

 

Anyways, combining those values gives a passing "potential" of how good I think teams could be through the air. Obviously this won't translate 1:1 to actual results but it should be somewhat close. Below is a chart of the "Passing Attack" score I came up with and preseason passing YPG. As you can see there is a pretty good correlation even with dramatically unbalanced strength of schedules, few game samples, coaches trying out gameplans and depth charts, AI teams, etc..

 

 

On to the results!

 

We'll do a top-5, then the #1 from each conference and then a little specifics about the top-3 (also nobody tell Sage what school is bottom of this list )

 

 

 

Team	Score
Oregon State	650.89
Oklahoma	636.17
Western Michigan	616.41
Kentucky	614.1
Texas	603

 

 

Conference	Top School
AAC	East Carolina (596.45)
ACC	North Carolina (597.38)
Big 12	Oklahoma (636.17)
B1G	Ohio State (588.88)
MAC	Western Michigan (616.41)
Mountain West	Fresno State (577.1)
PAC	Oregon State (650.89)
SEC	Kentucky (614.1)
Sunbelt	South Alabama (564.1)
Conference USA	North Texas (600.38)

 

Let's take a deep dive into Oregon State, Oklahoma, and Western Michigan

 

Oregon State takes the #1 spot with just great depth all-around. QB Dekota Link is a top-5 QB in the nation with an A rating in just about everything. He's also throwing to a VERY good WR, Steven Labissiere and the #3 TE Luis Van Slyke. The good news for opponents is that the trio are all seniors this year and will only have one shot to try and set records. While their OL doesn't have any particularly stand-out pass blockers, they are quite consistent with no glaring holes for opposing pass-rushers to exploit giving Dekota pretty consistent protection to rely on.

 

Oklahoma in contrast has an even better QB-WR battery with #4 QB David Paul throwing to #10 WR Andrew Richards. I would expect this combination to make A LOT of noise nationwide. However, they don't have the greatest depth of options with a pretty big drop-off after Richards. While they also have a true star pass-blocking OT in Ryan Dunn (who's only a Jr.!) the rest of their OL has a few holes in it, particularly at C where Eric Blazek is just a 2-star C overall player. Luckily there aren't a ton of pass-rush threats coming up the middle so they work around him on that front.

 

Western Michigan makes top-3 thanks to their top-2 WRs, #7 Marcus Ekstrom and #14 Durham Simmons who are the best starting line-up of any school in the country. QB Theo Scribner is no slouch himself as he's in the upper echelon nation-wide and his production should be even more outsized than his ability with those 2 stars to throw to. Holding WMU back is their OL, as they have a mediocre interior line. However, their OT's are pretty good and this may be good enough to propel them to number one if they can hold up long enough against opposing DTs and Theo plays well this year (and also because @Jieret is a great coach and the other top-3 schools have nobody coaching them lol)

[Rocketcan]

As you can see there is a pretty good correlation

 

It's good to see that the sim works in that sense then! Lol

[SyndaKyt]

Where the Hell is ODU

[Kremit]

the other top-3 schools have nobody coaching them lol

 

Damn there's some very good offenses sitting there unloved.

[tsweezy]

In the mega-outlier category lol. Eli bell is a shocker with only B overall, arm strength, and accuracy

[subsequent]

Just goes to show you that gameplanning is so much more important huh.

[rabidsnowman]

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I think this metric fails to account for pass catching RBs, which drops us down noticeably considering I believe we have the best in the country.

[Rome]

Yeah but he's an A IQ and an A+ girlfriend

[Rome]

[Rome]

Other team 1v1 me final destination no items

[Rome]

WITH MY ESPN POWERS, I FORSEE THAT I AM THE LEFT DOT AND MY NEW SUPER COOL ANIME RIVAL IS OKLAHOMA

 

DIBS ON NON-EMO ONE